Catholic Answers is the largest lay Catholic apostolate in the USA (if not the world) founded by Karl Keating. They tend to do a very good job at refuting some of the low-hanging fruit (usually from Fundamentalist Protestants) that one finds raised against Catholicism. However, time and time again, whenever they discuss “Mormonism,” they tend to be like the Fundamentalists they interact with: ignorant, and too often, disingenuous. I am pretty sure the MO of their past and present employees (Patrick Madrid; Jimmy "Gish Gallop" Akin; Joe Heschmeyer) is to engage in a 10-second google search and throw out everything, including the kitchen sink, from the likes of the Tanners [on this, see Barry R. Bickmore, Deconversion of a Catholic Priest], and engage in “boundary maintenance” by pretending to believe that responses from myself, Blake Ostler, Brant Gardner, Stephen Smoot, et al., do not exist). Take the following example of an article that shows (1) the author has never read the Book of Mormon and (2) the author has never read a book or article on the fauna of the New World they so confidently discuss:
Bees in the New World
Scientists have demonstrated that honey
bees were first brought to the New World by Spanish explorers in the fifteenth
century, but the Book of
Mormon, in Ether 2:3, claims they were introduced around 2000 B.C.
The problem was that Joseph Smith
wasn’t a naturalist; he didn’t know anything about bees and where and when they
might be found. He saw bees in America and threw them in the Book of Mormon as a little local color. He didn’t
realize he’d get stung by them. (Problems
with the Book of Mormon, Catholic Answers)
This
is a double non sequitur, though one has to give the author some points for
being so confident in his deception.
Non
sequitur no. 1:
Bees
are only mentioned as being in the possession of Book of Mormon peoples in the
Old World. Ether 2:3, speaking of the Jaredites' travel in the Old World,
reads:
And they did also carry with them
deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with
them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the
land, seeds of every kind. (BTW, we have strong linguistic evidence for the
Book of Mormon here the author is ignorant of; see, for e.g., “Deseret,” Book of
Mormon Onomasticon Website, and Kevin L. Barney, “On the
Etymology of Deseret”)
While
"bee" is mentioned by Nephi, it is part of an Isaiah quotation; it is
not speaking of the fauna of the New World:
And it shall come to pass in that day
that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of Egypt,
and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. (2 Nephi 17:18 [= Isaiah 7:18])
This
is more evidence that the author of the piece (dollars to donuts, the author is
Jimmy “Gish
Gallop” Akin) is ignorant of the Book of Mormon.
Non
sequitur no. 2:
Bees
were known to the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures before the Conquistadors,
showing that the author (again, probably Jimmy Akin, who is an intellectual fraud)
is ignorant of New World history and scholarship. Consider the following from
non-LDS sources:
Paragraph VIII. Of bees and their
honey wax.
There are two kinds of bees and both
are very much smaller than ours. The larger kind of these breeds in hives,
which are very small. They do not make honeycomb as ours do, but a kind of
small blisters like walnuts of wax all joined one to the other and full of
honey. To cut them away they do nothing more than open the hives and to break
away these blisters with a small stick, and thus the honey runs out and they
take the wax when they please. The rest breed I the woods in hollows of trees
and of stones and there they search for the wax, in which and in honey this
land abounds, and the honey is very good, except that, as the fertility of the
nourishment of the bees is great, it sometimes comes out a little watery and it
is necessary to give it a boiling on the fire, and when this is done it is very
good and keeps very well. The wax is good, except that it is very smoky, and
the cause has never been ascertained, and in some provinces it is much more
yellow on account of the flowers. These bees do not sting nor do they do harm
when the honeycombs are cut. (Diego de Landa, c. 1566, Landa’s Relación De
Las Cosas De Yucatan: A Translation, ed. Alfred M. Tozzer [New York: Kraus
Reprint Corporation, 1966], 193-94)
There were several breeds of dogs
current among the Maya, each with its own name. One such strain was barkless;
males were castrated and fattened on corn, and either eaten or sacrificed.
Another was used in the hunt. Both wild and domestic turkeys were known, but
only the former used as sacrificial victims in ceremonies. As he still does
today, the Maya farmer raised the native stingless bees, which are kept in
small, hollow logs closed with mud plaster at either end and stacked up in
A-frames, but wild honey was also much appreciated. (Michael D. Coe, The
Maya [2d ed.; New York: Penguin Book, 1966], 163)
Melipona beecheii
STINGLESS BEE
Abeja (S) Ba’alel kaab (M)
Identification: Much of the bee’s body
shows black with some yellow and brown stripes; it measures a bit less than a
centimeter. Long, thin, brown papery tubes mark the nest entrance (Schwarz
1932).
Habitat: Ko’olel kaab live in tropical
dry and wet forests, building hives in small caverns and crevasses.
Range: They range at least through
Mexico down to Costa Rica and are native to the area (Schwarz 1932).
Similar species: Stingless bees are
part of the Meliponinae subfamily; within the family exist two main genera:
Melipona and Trigona. Trigona, probably the most common genus of stingless bees
in the Maya area, measure somewhat longer than Melipona beecheii.
KO’OLEL KAAB have vestiges of a
stinger, which they may try to poke you with, having forgotten that their
stinger and venom dried up long ago. Their true defense is flying ton your nose
and ears and hair and, if really angry, pinching you with their tiny front
teeth. Bees give their life to protect the hive.
Ko’olel kaab build their hives in
something hollow: a cavity formed by tree roots, a fissure in the wall of a
ruin, a small cavern in the earth, or in the soft paper of a live termite nest.
Extending from a cavity full of comb, a thin brittle entrance tube flares open
like a flower. Brown and papers, the tube is filled with the constant traffic
of small black bees coming and going (Schwartz 1948).
Years ago, one hundred or more, trees
were laden with honeycomb. During a drought or when food was scarce, the Maya
could live on the high-calorie sustenance, but today honey is a rare food to
find in the forest. Maya beekeepers say that as there is less jungle and less
pesticide-free water, the bees produce less honey. Today, in parts of Mexico and
Central America, beekeepers’ sales of wax and honey are an important part of
their livelihood (Chemas and Rico-Gray 1991).
Pictures of queen and worker bees,
pieces of comb, and bee gods are drawn throughout old Maya codices (Tozzer and
Allen 1910). The ancient Maya used wax for various things, although probably
not as candles. Most important, wax was itz, a sacred manifestation of god,
used in ceremony. The Postclassic Maya meliculturists (Melipona beehive owners)
began to fast during the month of Zotz (September 140October 3), purifying
their bodies for the following month’s (Tzec: October 2-23) celebration of bees
(Sharer 1994). During Tzec they prayed to the four Bacabs, the four gods who
each held up a corner of the sky and bore a special color and year, in
particular they prayed to Hobnil to give them lots of honey. Hobnil closely
resembles the Mayan word hobonil (“of the beehive”) and is the Bacab who
resided in the east, overlooking the red Kan years. Beekeepers offered honey,
wax, and copal to the bee gods (Thompson 1970) and drew their pictures using
honey as their paint. At the end of the ceremony the Mayas prepared and drank
balche, a beverage made from fermented honey, water, and the bark of the ba’al
che’ tree (Lonchocarpus yucatanensis).
The ancient Maya domesticated
stingless bees, keeping and raising them like a farm animal. In past times
people provided small burrows for the bees to build their hives in.
Traditionally a piece of a living hive was placed inside a hollow log. This
acted as a seed for a new hive, and the bees began to build around the old
nest. The needs of the log were sealed with clay plugs or stones and a new hole
was carved in the side for the bees to use as an entrance. Hanging from a roof
corner or within a home garden, the hive was easily accessible as a family
needed honey or wax. The plugs were pulled from the hive and the sacs of honey
scooped out. Ko’olel kaab store their honey in small ovals of wax that clusters
together and break off easily.
In the wild, a hive or the site of a
hive, can exist for decades. A young virgin queen bee is thought to go in
search of a new nesting site along with a harem of female worker bees and
males. Descending on a suitable cavern, the flurry of the swarm soon subsides
into quiet, industrious working. The queen bee, until impregnated, remains
indistinguishable from other worker bees. Once she begins to lay eggs, her
abdomen swells to the point where she is nearly immobile.
Female worker bees prepare hexagonal
wax cells, each filled with pollen and honey, in which bee eggs will be laid.
Only young females can produce wax, excreting it form the back of their
abdomens in the form of small white scales. The queen lowers her abdomen into
the tax box and lays and egg in the bed of pollen and honey. Once submerged
into the food, the queen turns around to examine her work and then goes on to
the next cell. A worker bee bites and bends down the side of the hexagon in
order to seal it closed. Only one bee seals the chests full of larvae, although
if removed, another replaces her immediately. The larva eats the surrounding
food and grows. Worker bees carry away bits of the wax cradle as they are no
longer needed.
Eventually all the of wax is taken,
used in other construction, and the larva spins itself into a silk cocoon.
The exact function of the male ko’olel
kaab remains unclear: it may be simply to fertilize the queen, maintain the
hive, or produce wax, although the latter seems unlikely. What is clear is the
expulsion from the hive of many of the males at some point during the year.
Cast and barred from the nest, they die outside in droves on the ground
(Schwarz 1948).
Today, Maya beekeepers predominately
raise a European honey bee (Apis mellifera), which is locally called abeja
Americana. The European honey bee began to replace the ko’olel kaab in the
1930s and 1940s, when modern apiculture was introduced and honey production
began to boom. The honey bee, which actually came to Mesoamerica from Europe
along with the Spaniards in the 1500s, is valued for its higher rate of
production, despite its lower quality. The aggressive honey bee can forage
nectar from all types of blossoms and can adapt to less pristine, deforested
environments whereas ko’olel kaab requires blossoms from trees twenty years or
older. Ko’olel kaab, in Mayan, means “woman of the honey.” With the
introduction of the honey bee, ko’olel kaab honey became reserved for medicinal
and ceremonial uses (Chemas and Rico-Ray 1991).
A third type of bee is now common in
Central America: the African honey bee. Having migrated up from South America,
African honey bee. Having migrated up from South America, African bees have
become increasingly common and are widely recognized for their aggressive
behavior. African bees dispatch scouts that will buzz and hassle people
trespassing into the bees’ territory. If you are buzzed in this way, leave
quickly. A swarm of bees may soon follow; in addition to being aggressive, they
deliver a painful sting.
Bees are the cupids of trees; they
bring the pollen of one tree to the flower of another as they forage for the
ingredients of honey. Ko’olel kaab carry their booty in tiny pouches attached
to their hind legs. Worker bees, through pheromones, leave a trail of scent
marks for other bees to follow to the sources of discovered food. The mark may
last for two or three days, and bees forage both alone and in groups; each bee
adds to the mark en route to the nest (Leuthold 1975). Ko’olel Kaab often visit
chakaj fiddlewood, and ts’itts’il che’ (Gymnopodium floribundum), gathering
pollen and nectar from each blossom. The best honey comes from the nectar of
ts’itts’il che’ flowers, a tree that grows mainly in tropical dry forest. The
bees turn its nectar into large quantities of thick, red, sweet-smelling and
-tasting honey. The bees must visit over two million blossoms to make 0.45 kg
of honey (Chemas and Rico-Gray 1991).
The honey produced from each strain of
pollen and nectar has a unique taste, fragrance, color, and healing property.
Some honeys cure sore throats, others consumption, constipation, or swollen
injuries. Many of the Mayan names for trees and blossoms describe the healing
they offer to humans. Ko’olek kaab honey can currently be brought to Merida,
Mexico (Chemas and Rico-Gray, 1991). (Victoria Schlesinger, Animals and
Plants of the Ancient Maya: A Guide [Austin: University of Texas Press,
2001], 246-250, 252)
Here
is an image of bees in Mayan art (ibid., 249):
In
the preface to Jarosław Zrałka, Christophe Helmke, Laura Sotelo, and Wiesław
Koszku, "The
Discovery of Beehive and the Identification of Apiaries Among the Ancient Maya,"
Latin American Antiquity 29, no. 3 (2018): 514-31, we read:
Recently, an exceptional find was made
by the Nakum Archaeological Project in an offering deposited deep within the
architectural core of the Precolumbian Maya site of Nakum located in
northeastern Guatemala. The form of the object and comparisons made to
ethnographic analogs indicate that it is a clay beehive, most probably one of
the oldest in the Maya area and in the whole of Mesoamerica. Whether the object
was used for its intended function or is an emulation, or skeuomorph, of
perishable counterparts, remains unknown. The importance of this find lies in
the fact that beekeeping is an activity that is traced with difficulty in
archaeology. The present paper discusses the discovery of this artifact at
Nakum, which dates to the end of the Preclassic period (ca. 100 BC–AD 250/300),
in a wider temporal and spatial context and provides new data on Precolumbian
beekeeping. We use a broad comparative vantage, drawing on archaeological,
epigraphic, and ethnohistorical sources to discuss Mesoamerican beekeeping and
its role in both the daily and the ritual lives of the Maya.
On the presence of "honey" in the New World, see, for e.g., Karne Hursh Graber, "Honey: A sweet Maya legacy."
It
is pretty clear that, if Catholic Answers is the most popular lay Catholic
apostolate in the USA, it shows that many practicing Roman Catholics in America
sure love fluff, which probably explains why their modern apologists seem not
to have read pre-Vatican II documents which undercut their appeals to Newman’s
understanding of doctrinal development and other issues.
Not just an assessment of how dead in the water the "the Book of Mormon is false as it mentions bees in the New World!" argument but also if Akin were to engage in a fair debate with me or any informed Latter-day Saint (and/or if he were to defend a de fide dogma of Rome, such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary)
